Halloween is coming up and it’s time to start getting serious about costumes if you don’t want to be a sexy [insert noun here] or a regular-person-but-just-covered-in-blood-because-that’s-all-you-had-time-to-buy. This Halloween dare to be a little bit braver, a little more irreverent, and a little more clever with your costumes. That’s right folks — no more Lady Gaga get ups, lest you be deemed “like, sah 2010!” There’s a wealth of cultural reference at your disposal this year, with 2011 being renamed the Chinese Year Of The Meme (it hasn’t really, I just said that to get your attention). We’ve picked out some of our favourite musical memes of the year in the hopes that you’ll be inspired to trick yourself out in the spirit of a wickedly self-aware Halloween…

PREGONCÉ

Why? Only the baby of hip-pop royalty Jay-Z and Beyoncé could become an Internet meme and every GIF aficionado’s wet dream before the little tyke is even born. Barely beyond conception, Baby Bey-Z hit the Internet harder than “Friday” (see below) and made “Pregoncé” a word faster than you can say, “I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly.” For Halloween, go as Pregoncé in the costume she wore at the VMAs earlier this year when she unleashed unveiled her newly rounded belly to the world.

How? We’ll start from the top down: first you need some crazy 70′s flicked blonde hair, wig it if you’re a brunette or a dude, and if you’re already blessed with the golden tresses, heat up those rollers, girl! Next you’ll need a white shirt (stuffed with a pillow, of course we don’t expect you to actually get pregnant) and black pants; easy. The sparkle blazer might be a bit harder. I suggest taking a cheap / second hand blazer, a can of spray on glue, a butt-load of glitter and having the absolute time of your life. Add some velcro to the inside of the blazer so it’s easy to rip open over the course of Halloween as you constantly re-enact the big reveal. Carry around a fake microphone so you can throw it down dramatically before you rub your belly emphatically and smile, smile, smile!

With Lonely Island featured player Justin Timberlake hosting the season finale of Saturday Night Live, it’s no surprise that he and Andy Samberg reprised their roles as the “D**k in a Box” duo (the pair who may as well be called “Color Me Really Really Bad, Like, Awful”). But their riff on the “Same Girl” gets a Shyamalanian twist: the “girl” is played by none other than musical guest Lady Gaga, and she suggests the titular “3-way”: Read more…

The Lonely Island‘s Turtleneck and Chain came closest, at #3, but none of this past week’s album releases posed a real challenge to the continued chart dominance of Adele. Her 21 is #1 for the eighth of its twelve weeks on the chart, thanks in part to the continued success of “Rolling in the Deep,” which itself finally hit #1 on the Hot 100 last week after 17 weeks climbing the chart. Not even Lady Gaga‘s “Edge of Glory” (in at #2) could topple it this week. In its second chart week, Now 38 also outsold Turtleneck and Chain. Christina Perri‘s and Tyler, the Creator‘s debut LPs round out the top five.

Aside from the one-two punch of Adele and Lady Gaga, the top of the singles chart is mostly full of songs that have peaked but remain popular (excepting Pitbull‘s “Give Me Everything” and the Black Eyed Peas‘ “Just Can’t Get Enough”). And the two women are likely to continue to battle for the top of the chart, especially once Born This Way is released. So the bump in digital sales that has temporarily boosted the industry is largely due to the success of female artists, as Chris Molanphyexplained last week for the Village Voice‘s Sound of the City blog.

Michael Bolton riffed on his movie soundtrack love-ballad singing style, with help from The Lonely Island, on this week’s Saturday Night Live. In the comedy-rappers’ SNL Digital Short “Jack Sparrow,” Bolton paid tribute not only to the protagonist of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, but also to Forrest Gump, Erin Brockovich, and Scarface‘s Tony Montana (in each case costumed as the character), as the Lonely Island trio, who had been hoping for a club-rap hook, look puzzled and, increasingly, annoyed.

As far as the Lonely Island go, the contrast-gag is a bit old-hat. (They even use a callback to their short Andy Popping into Frame, with Bolton, wearing a Jolly Roger tricornet, pops into frame during a club scene to gleefully proclaim “Now back to the good part!”) But choosing Bolton as a collaborator was incredibly canny, since most of his biggest hits, particularly on 1989′s six-times-platinum Soul Provider, were co-written with Diane Warren, the undisputed champion of the film-soundtrack love ballad (“I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing” is only the most famous of her many soundtrack hits). And Bolton himself sang on the soundtracks for Sing (“One More Time”), Only You (“Once in a Lifetime”), and Hercules (“Go the Distance”). “Jack Sparrow” proves Bolton to be a pretty good sport. We just hope the short didn’t upstage the epsiode’s actual musical guest, Ellie Goulding.